I had a bunch of fun just this weekend. I had been noticing blog chatter about running webview's on the Android desktop, and when I looked I found two projects dedicated to making it possible to write applications for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, etc. using just html, css, javascript and a little bit of bridging to the native phone facilities. One's called QuickConnect (http://tetontech.wordpress.com/) and the other is Phone Gap (http://phonegap.com/). The idea is that you build an app that links to the webkit libraries, opens a window, and loads a url. The url can come from the local filesystem, from the web, from an archive built into the application, it doesn't matter as long as it loads cleanly and finds the rest of the stuff it needs to run.
It sounded like fun, so I started making one for Ubuntu. It's 235 lines of bewildered.c, 58 lines of Readme.txt, and 32 lines of Makefile which compiles to a 15608 byte executable, stripped of symbols. ldd says it has 65 libraries linked in. I run it as: CANVAS='http://elf.org/quantum-classical-clock/clock.html?hand_style=fade&hand_shape=lozenge&dial=face' \ ./bewildered --uri="${CANVAS}" --geometry=225x225-20+40 --transparent=1 --decorated=0 -below=1 and I have a transparent clock with alpha blended quantum delocalized hands running on my desktop, using the exact same code that runs the clock on my web page in the big boy browsers. But it's my desktop clock, now, and my first transparent desktop bling. -- rec -- On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]> wrote: > OK, lots of us have noticed that computing is not all that fun anymore. Its > a grind. Sure the outcome of the grind might be rewarding. But is it fun? > > So my challenge to us here is: What's the most fun computer project you can > think of. Or have done, for that matter! > > This includes using fun environment like NetLogo, Smalltalk and the like. > Rapid (and satisfying!) prototyping. > > -- Owen > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
